FITCHBURG, Wis.—BellBrook Labs announced in mid-September
that it was "undertaking a comprehensive effort" to validate purified human
methyltransferases for robust, high-throughput screening-ready detection
in
BellBrook's recently developed Transcreener EPIGEN Methyltransferase Assay.

In this effort,
the Madison-area company has been working
with Malvern, Pa.-based Reaction Biology Corp., which is also the source of
those purified human methyltransferases.

The team effort is aimed, the two companies say, "at
accelerating public and private drug discovery initiatives targeting
the
epigenetic modifications that underlie a broad range of diseases, including
cancer and autoimmune disorders."

The collaboration news was quickly followed by news at the
beginning of October that the two companies had combined the
Transcreener HTS
assay technology with Reaction Biology's purified enzymes to provide "a
complete methyltransferase assay solution for inhibitor
high-throughput
screening and profiling."

Discovery of new drugs that target methyltransferases
has
become a major initiative for many pharmaceutical and biotech companies because
those enzymes are responsible for epigenetic modifications
underlying a broad
range of diseases; however, efforts to identify new molecules that disrupt the
activity of aberrant methyltransferases have been
slowed by the lack of robust
high-throughput screening assays and high-quality, purified methyltransferase
enzymes, the companies note. Further
complicating the situation is the fact
that each methyltransferase in humans requires a specialized set of conditions
and components to produce
activity.

"We launched the Transcreener EPIGEN back in September 2011,
and a lot of customers
and pharmas were evaluating it," recalls Robert Lowery,
president and CEO of BellBrook Labs. "The assay worked great, but people have
had trouble
working with the methyltransferase enzymes—the enzymes are very
complicated and they are challenging to use with kinases. So to help our
customers, we
pursued a strategy of looking at various commercial enzymes and
we found Reaction Biology's to be very high quality. We began to evaluate
specific
enzymes of interest to make things easier for customers and that led
to the concept of packaging their enzymes with the EPIGEN to give people a
complete solution."

According to BellBrook, the Transcreener EPIGEN
Methyltransferase Assay
has universal applicability across the entire
methyltransferase family. Meanwhile, Reaction Biology has produced more than 30
recombinant human
methyltransferases to what the companies both call "the most
stringent purity and activity requirements in the industry."

What BellBrook then did was to undertake a comprehensive
effort to identify the optimal reaction conditions for each of
Reaction
Biology's methlytransferases in the EPIGEN Methyltransferase Assay. By taking
much of the guesswork and upfront assay development out of
methyltransferase
screening and profiling, the companies say they had hoped their collaborative
effort and resulting combined solution would accelerate
the discovery of new
drugs for diseases with an epigenetic basis and reduce the cost of developing
assays for such purposes.

In truth, Lowery notes, the decision to launch a combined
product line goes back to August, but the two companies
wanted to make sure
everything worked properly before officially announcing that. The two companies
worked very well together, Lowery notes, and that
led to a "flurry of activity"
that resulted in a product line to announce just a couple months later.

"We found Reaction Biology to be really easy to work with,
and they were open to the idea of collaborating and co-marketing right from the
start," he says. "They are mostly service and screening and profiling, and
we're making reagents, so there's really no competition between us and
our
goals align well. They do sell some products directly, but we will end up being
a good distribution channel for them. Reaction Biology is an
outstanding
partner both from the scientific and business perspectives."